


resolutions & reflections

by outsquatchin94



Category: NCIS
Genre: AU, Episode: s06e08 Cloak, F/M, Season 11ish, Talking about unresolved issues FINALLY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27074332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outsquatchin94/pseuds/outsquatchin94
Summary: Ziva and Tony have a long-overdue conversation about things many years past.Set possibly around season 11, if Ziva came back to Tony.
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Kudos: 16





	resolutions & reflections

The first thing Tony notices is that the apartment is strangely quiet. He can tell that even before he opens the door. Usually Ziva has some music on or he can hear the faint sounds of dinner being made. Tonight however, there are no such noises. For a moment, the old, wild fear courses through him. _Did she leave??_ No, he tells himself. She’ll be inside (maybe it’s a lie, but he has to get in there somehow, and he might not make it if she isn’t on the other side of the door). 

He opens the door cautiously and goes inside. 

“Sweetcheeks?” He calls into the apartment, trying to see if she’ll pop around the corner from the bedroom. She doesn’t. The living room and kitchen are silent. He can see a few things set haphazardly on the counter like Ziva had started to make dinner but then been interrupted. Nothing is so out of place as to suggest a break-in, but then again, if that had happened there would probably be injured burglars on the floor. 

“Ziva?” He calls again, still hoping for some sign of where she is. He decides to try the bedroom first, since that has been her safe haven when she has bad days. He decides against leaving his gun, however. Just in case. 

Tony walks quietly down the dim hallway--she must have left dinner preparations some time ago--and into the bedroom. Ziva is there, wrapped in a soft blanket, and sitting in a chair by the window. 

“Z?” Tony makes an effort to speak softly and hopes he sounds soothing. Some of her bad days have been very bad, and while he knows he can’t solve her problems or magically make her feel better, on other days he can usually at least get her through with a hug. He isn’t sure which kind of day this evening has turned out to be. She hasn’t moved or reacted to him yet, so he isn’t sure this will be something a hug can help. This might be a ‘let’s go to bed and just lie wrapped in blankets until we fall asleep’ evening. Those are fine too (really any time he gets to have with her in his arms, safe and whole, is fine by him. Great, even. But it’s never great when it means she’s unhappy). 

“Z, you’re worrying me,” he moves around the chair to sit on the windowsill. From here he can see that she has streaks of tears down her cheeks, and she’s holding her necklace with one hand. Now that he’s in front of her, she looks at him and offers a wan smile. He lets out a breath. 

“Hi,” is all he can manage, but it seems like enough. She reaches out and catches his hand, holding on to three of his fingers. He adjusts his grip so that he can properly hold her hand, and he sees her exhale. She uses her other hand to wipe her cheeks, although her eyes still sparkle with unshed tears. She nods at him, but at least now she seems to be taking deep breaths and her shoulders have loosened slightly. 

Tony brings his other hand to her so that both of his hands are wrapped around her hand, and he strokes the back of her hand lightly. 

“Darlin,’” he takes a deep breath. “What’s going on?”

Ziva just lets out a deep breath in response, but now she has a faint smile on her face. It isn’t as easy as the smiles he used to draw from her when they met, almost eight years earlier. Her smiles now are more marked by sadness, and they are slower to come, but they are even more precious for that. Tony just waits for her to speak. A lesson he has learned, along this journey with her, is that silence is (actually) sometimes quite nice. He would not readily admit this, mostly because Ziva would tease him mercilessly, but he loves to just sit with her. 

“I am just thinking….” she starts but then trails off. She begins again. “I am just thinking how far we have come.”

Tony just nods and watches another tear slip down her cheek. He decides it’s probably safe to brush it away, so he does. 

“We had so many moments, when things could have been different, you know?” Ziva looks up at him then. “Remember that conversation in the elevator?”

Tony gives a rueful smile of his own. “Which time?”

Ziva shakes her head at him and takes a deep breath. “That is a fair point. I was thinking of the time after that disastrous test to capture DOMINO.”

Tony has to look away at that. Ziva pulls him back by squeezing his hand. 

“I forgive you, you know.” She still looks sad, but her eyes are clear. “I was hurt, I cannot deny that. But I also never asked you for what I wanted. I hinted, yes, and I was jealous, yes, but I never truly told you.”

Tony finds himself becoming teary as well (a frequent side effect of the startlingly honest discussions they’ve had in the past few months). He takes a deep breath and tries to sort out what to say. He shakes his head.

“I was a coward, Ziva.” He has no fancy explanation to hide behind. “I knew. I knew what you wanted, and I knew what I wanted. And I still didn’t do anything.”

“I know. There were things in our way. We could not see ahead, yes?” Ziva has shifted a bit now, and she seems to be unfurling from her previously hunched position in the chair. The blanket has slipped off her shoulders a bit, and Tony can see the small swell of her stomach. 

“As soon as I left the elevator, I knew,” Tony looks at their joined hands. “I was so ashamed. I wanted to turn right back around and take it all back. I knew I’d fucked it up. You said--”

“I had seen you go down, and we know how that always ended on cases.” Ziva gives a wry smile, and suddenly both of them are thinking of their very first case together, when Tony used a chair to beat up the bad guys who were threatening his ‘pregnant wife’ Sophie, or when Tony stayed right by her side (every time) she defused a bomb, or when he went all the way to Somalia to find her. Those are (nearly) evenly matched with the times she had saved _his_ ass, and even though she sometimes complained about his stupidity, she had never been anything less than wholeheartedly set on keeping him safe. “I saw you go down, there was a gunshot…”

Ziva has gone quiet again. Tony just grasps her hand with renewed strength and gives it a squeeze. She starts speaking again.

“I saw you go down, and I didn’t care. I just knew that if they were going to hurt you, I would fight every last one of them.” A fresh tear slips down her cheek, and she brushes it away herself. “Even if we could not say it, I would have fought those soldiers to the death for you.”

“I know,” Tony responds quietly. “I know you would have. And while my ninja skills are clearly not as good as yours, I would have done the same.”

“Tony,” Ziva just pauses and looks at him. The light from the city and the moon outside the window make her eyes luminous. “Tony, you’ve done more than that.”

“I need you to know, ninja,” Tony looks at their clasped hands and then back at her face. “I wish, more than anything, that I could go back and take back what I said that day.”

He lets out a shuddering breath and finds he has begun to cry properly now. 

“If I could go back, and take away any of the things we said, the things that kept us from figuring this out, I would do it. You have to know that.” Tony looks at Ziva, willing her to understand. “And if that stopped other things from happening, if that meant there was no return to Mossad, no confrontation in Israel, no Somalia, so many other things could be different.”

Ziva lets out a shaky breath of her own, but she also moves from the chair to stand between his legs. 

“I know,” she whispers. She leans up to kiss his cheek, and then she fits herself under the curve of his chin, tucking her nose to his throat. She can taste the salt of his tears where they've slipped down his cheek and run down his neck. “I know.”

“Other people…” he trails off. He means Michael, but he can’t quite bring himself to say that, not in the sanctuary of their bedroom. “Other people might be alive today if things were different.”

“Yes,” Ziva whispers from the safety of his chest. “They might be, but I might not have you.”

Tony has no good response. He’d like to think that in any life, somewhere, somehow, some time, he would find his way to her. But nothing is certain. He releases her hand to fully wrap his arms around her and hold her close. 

“I know that too, darlin,’” he says, “but I still wish I could turn back time and take back those things I said. I hurt your feelings, a lot back then, and that…”

“I have forgiven you, and to talk about it like this has helped.” Ziva looks up at him, and although they aren’t perfect, the two of them, a look like that is almost enough to restore his faith in everything good about humanity. If the woman he loves can look at him like that after _everything_ they’ve been through, anything might be possible.

“Come on, ninja, I think the start of dinner was out on the counter, let’s go eat so we can get you to bed.” Tony straightens and moves away from the window, bringing Ziva with him. She shoves lightly at his side. “Not like _that_. I just want to make sure you’re in bed at a respectable hour, that’s all. You need your sleep!”

Ziva grumbles quietly, but as they make their way out of the bedroom and back down the now darkened hallway, she leans up and plants a quick kiss on his cheek. 

“I love you, you silly man,” she whispers. 

**Author's Note:**

> All of this aka I tried to resolve some issues that made me REALLY sad when I watched this episode (during this rewatch I've realized A LOT more things about the complexities and adult difficulties of their relationship that younger me missed completely. And IT'S ROUGH y'all). Any typos or issues in formatting are 100% mine. Basically zero proofreading went into this.


End file.
